“It?óÔé¼Ôäós more extreme than the changes we made in 1994, when we added the plank and cut the diffusers back. It?óÔé¼Ôäós similar in terms of changes from the 1982 ground-effect cars to 1983 flat-bottomed cars. The ING Renault F1 Team pushed the development of the R28 to the last race in 2008.”

Mario Theissen: “The development of KERS will see Formula One take on a pioneering role for series production technologies going forward. F1 will give a baptism of fire to innovative concepts whose service life and reliability have not yet reached the level required for series production vehicles, and their development will be driven forward at full speed.”

“More than any other banker of his generation, Sir Fred, tall, lanky, plainspeaking and sardonic, came to embody an ambitious, sometimes arrogant-looking style of banking. He was ever ready with the dry quip, ever eager to embark on ambitious deals. Whether it was moving to a plush new headquarters building outside Edinburgh, or writing big sponsorship cheques to the tennis star Andy Murray or for Formula One racing, the boy from Paisley was game.”

“The rules were published in October 2007 and we started work straight away. We had our first wind tunnel test in December 2007. I don’ t think that’s a lot different to where anyone else started. The difference was that we wrapped up a lot of our resources around April 2008 and that had an adverse effect on FW30 development. You could see that in the latter half 0f 2008. But we took that decision because we thought our best chance of closing the gap was in 2009 and we didn’t think we could achieve that in 2008. Whether that pays off or not, I don’t know. It’s anyone’s guess.”

2 comments on F1 links: New technical rules analysed

– Pfff, bs! Doesn’t he remember 1998? Cars got smaller (from 200cm in width to 180cm), which totally changed their construction. And we got the groved tyres. That was a lot bigger change than just cutting on the wings this year.

Best wishes to Conway on our side of the pond- he’s a perfect example of an F1 team- in this case Honda- overlooking an accoplished young racer in favor of name recognition and other off-track factors in Senna.